Whenever one thinks of the history contemporary Indian art, the name Amrita Shergil leaps out inescapably. Amrita Shergil – the mercurial, passionate and controversial artist of modern India was a path breaker in the true sense of the word. The beautiful Shergil transferred her beauty and ethos onto canvas to create some of India’s best-known and best-loved works.

Amrita Shergil, born in 1913, was the daughter of a Sikh aristocrat of Punjab and his Hungarian wife. She did her schooling in Florence. Very early in her childhood she showed her inclinations to painting and art. While in her teens she accompanied her mother to go study art in Paris.
This was in 1929 and she first went to Grande Chaumiere where she worked under Pierre Vallant. She later went to Ecole Nationale des Beaux – Arts and learnt from Lucien Simon.

During her student days Shergil made a name for herself in her circles in Paris. She was elected Associate of the Grand Salon, Paris, 1933 and also exhibited at the Salon de Tuilleries at the incredible age of 21.

However, throughout those days she kept writing about her intense longing and urge to return to India and be one with Indian culture. This still surprises many as, being half Indian with a Hungarian mother and being very westernised in her ways, she still showed an urge for her roots and that too in her teens.

Shergil returned to India in 1934 and went to Simla, the summer capital of the Raj at that time. This is where her journey of Indian painting really started. She used to draw and paint the hill people of that area and show them in their stark situations. Her paintings reflected the poverty and melancholy of these people.

Very soon, traditional Indian Art influences merged with her western training to bring about a unique style, which, till today, is unmistakably Shergil. In the few years that followed her paintings drew from the styles of Ajanta & Ellora as well as ancient Indian sculpture. She painted mainly in oils and also worked with charcoal. Her subjects were mainly rural simple people. She was also smitten with her own beauty – demonstrated by the numerous self-portraits she painted.

Her paintings were always bold and told of an underlying passion and fire. Somewhat like her own self. In those days of tradition she had always shocked the people around her with bold and free lifestyle. But, all through, the paintings had a touch of melancholy – perhaps mirroring her own state of mind.

A career chart would show that she was awarded the Simla Fine Arts Society exhibition prize in 1935 - an Honour that she refused. In 1940 she won the award of the Bombay Art Society. She exhibited her works in major cities of India from 1935 onwards and was internationally acclaimed.

Shergil died in 1941 at the young age of 28.

Today Shergil’s works have been declared as National Art Treasures and are found in most notable international private and public collections, galleries and museums.

What made Amrita Shergil so special? Maybe the fact that she gravitated to India in spite of such a western influence and background, maybe the fact that she was a woman boldly making a statement at a time when only men were seen in art circles, maybe the fact that she was decades ahead of her times. Maybe a combination of all this but whatever it was – Amrita Shergil was very special – A legend of contemporary Indian Art.